Document Collaboration - Linking People, Process, and Content

Documents are an integral part of every business and institution. Organizations of all sizes must learn to manage the production of documents effectively, efficiently, and diligently, in order to ensure best business performance. Technologies like Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMSs) have helped organizations improve internal efficiency; however, extending these systems to partners and stakeholders has proved more difficult. Internet connectivity now provides incredible reach, but productivity is still constrained by the collaborative range of office productivity tools and ingrained working practices. The time has come for Document Collaboration to move from simple collaborative exchanges to sophisticated collaborative experiences. This report will allow you to understand how investments in this technology can deliver real business benefits and improve your competitive advantage. Business Process Management (BPM) and workflow are important enablers of more formal Document Collaboration processes, and have the potential to dramatically improve operational efficiency and compliance. Also, the evolution of Software as a Service (SaaS) and online solutions, such as Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Confluence, FilesAnywhere, WikiPad, and StikiPad, will make the World Wide Web an increasingly important environment for Document Collaboration. Order your report today and understand how Document Collaboration processes and strategies can help you support, encourage, and facilitate high-value interactions in a manner that ensures information confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility. This report allows you to: Understand why no single Document Collaboration product, solution, or vendor can satisfy every organization's needs. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to Document Collaboration. Access insightful analysis and market lifecycle ratings through 2010. Compare information on key vendors, products, and technologies within this market. Key findings: Wikis and blogs are here to stay, and document authoring and collaboration tools must integrate fully with these new paradigms. Information workers spend up to 30% of their working day just looking for data they need to complete a task, and 15-25% of their time on non-productive, information-related activities. Both figures are untenable positions for any organization. The interest in online collaboration solutions has clearly accelerated since the terrorist attacks on New York and London, and this has resulted in a plethora of new products on the market and a new eagerness from established vendors. Open Document Format (ODF) has achieved growing acceptance as the document format of choice for governments around the world, less than six months after its adoption as an international standard.

Additional Information

Introduction

A common business function links all organisations: Document Collaboration. Documents, in whatever format they may exist, are an integral part of every business and institution. Indeed, organisations that cannot manage the production of documents effectively and efficiently risk a great deal more than poor business performance. Organisations cannot exist without documents, and therefore the efficacy with which documents are created, revised, and published should be of the utmost importance to business managers.

To date, Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMSs) systems have helped organisations improve internal efficiency, but extending such systems out to partners and stakeholders has proved much more difficult. Technology issues, business constraints, and information formats combine to make the job of Document Collaboration a much more arduous one than it should be, and this in turn often creates a feeling of futility and frustration in most information workers today.

The business value of any collaborative endeavour is clearly and undeniably embodied within the business value of the end-product, and so in the ultra-competitive ‘new world of work’, Document Collaboration tools and technologies must support, encourage, and facilitate high-value interactions in a manner that ensures information confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility.

Business Issues

Over the years, the notion of collaboration has been responsible for some of the most Utopian and naïve visions of what IT can deliver into the enterprise, and yet organisations continue to seek out new means by which that most expensive of all human corporate resources - i.e. the information worker - can become more efficient, effective, and productive. Four or five years ago, corporate IT managers were focusing on internal corporate collaboration solutions, Content Management, and Web conferencing products, and as a result the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) market sprang forth. Today, however, senior managers are looking for ways to reduce the excessive cost and complexity of high-level business interactions, and those scenarios relating to Document Collaboration in particular.

The environment of the information worker has changed considerably over the last ten years. Redefined by the Internet, more powerful desktop software, computing systems, wireless connectivity, and a proliferation of mobile devices from laptop computers to smart phones, the definition of a workplace or team now cuts across locations, organisations, and time zones. The office is no longer a fixed location or a dedicated room within a building: the office is any place where the employee creates, shares, and stores information, and collaborates with colleagues, partners, customers, and others on projects and business processes.

Whilst social, political, economic, and demographic trends continue to transform the business landscape, companies and institutions are still challenged to achieve success according to traditional measures: profitability, market share, service delivery, and customer satisfaction. Many organisations now operate in a global market, and as business models continue to evolve, so business leaders look to their IT suppliers for tools and technologies that will empower the individuals within their organisations to make a difference.

Technology Features

To date, Electronic Document Management Systems have helped organisations improve internal efficiency, but extending such systems out to partners and stakeholders has proved much more difficult. The current emphasis on compliance with legislative and regulatory frameworks has, however, brought the discipline back into sharp focus. As a result, organisations are now starting to develop holistic strategies that encompass all aspects of the document lifecycle.

The simple provision of collaborative-working tools, technologies, and infrastructure, does not in itself make collaboration happen, nor will it. However, the mere fact that collaboration and interaction is possible does in itself have value. The value of any collaborative endeavour is embodied within the value of the end-product, which is itself a reflection of the value of the individual transactions and exchanges between participants. Therefore, Document Collaboration tools must encourage and support high value transactions, and also the sharing of commercially valuable and sensitive information.

Butler Group would argue that the initial value of a Document Collaboration tool or facility is proportional to the number of people with which it allows the user to connect and engage. However, with the real value of such a solution clearly linked to the individual’s ability to exploit it, training becomes without doubt one of the most important enablers of effective Document Collaboration.

Architectures, Models, Standards, and Strategies

Several factors are combining to drive the need for a range of application deployment options in order to accommodate a broad range of business scenarios. Users require access to collaborative applications from a diverse set of locations and client types. The traditional approach of installing a Windows-based application onto a desk-bound PC is no longer sufficient to accommodate the range of situations in which information workers find themselves. Furthermore, organisations are having to become far more adaptive and agile, and as a result need to think beyond the confines of the traditional corporate desktop PC. And so, organisations should consider adopting application deployment strategies based on business scenarios and requirements in order to exploit the broad set of application delivery architectures now possible.

The challenge for Document Collaboration technology is to facilitate the creation, collation, revision, and distribution of business documents. Furthermore, it must support these activities across a broad set of usage scenarios and in a manner that does not impose undue burden on the participants - either technically or procedurally. Although Document Collaboration between different organisations is a common business requirement, many information workers still find the activity overly demanding as a result of using tools that were not conceived in the Internet age.

In May 2006, the International Standards Organisation approved a standard file format - OpenDocument Format - to be used worldwide for the storage of files produced by office software (word processor documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, etc.). For the first time in the history of computing, software users will be guaranteed that they will be able to use their data in any compliant software package, both now and in the future. However, whilst politics may well determine that support for ODF becomes de rigueur at some point in the future, Microsoft Office file formats will continue to be the de facto standards of the present.

Employees must be able to quickly and easily locate the information they require to complete a given task or to support business decision-making. Furthermore, allied with this search and discovery aspect of information work is the ability to distribute, share, and collaborate on this information with colleagues and third parties. Moreover, many business decisions require input, opinion, and expertise from more than one person, and so an organisation’s Document Collaboration strategy will undoubtedly have a major bearing on business success.

Market Issues

The market for Document Collaboration is large but immature. In this market, many still rely heavily on e-mail as the main method of distributing documents, with little control exercised over their management and version control. Whilst many continue to collaborate in an ad hoc way, more advanced organisations are changing to structured methods for Document Collaboration.

The market is driven by the need to stem the rising tide of information that is flowing around and out of corporations in an unstructured and uncontrolled manner via e-mail and Instant Messaging (IM). The ultimate aim is to maximise benefits from corporate knowledge and information whilst streamlining everyday processes and increasing employee productivity.

There is widely-varying demand for Content Management and related Document Collaboration technologies across industry sectors, with the higher end of the market driven by external factors such as compliance requirements and geograpghy. Butler Group believes that the lower levels of demand in other sectors indicate lack of clarity and ambiguity about Document Collaboration. Many companies are still working on automating their processes which, when completed, will create the right environment for Document Collaboration, leading to increased demand. As the market matures and users get a clearer vision of what they need, we are likely to see more industry-specific applications emerging. These solutions will meet a growing demand that is estimated to reach US$1.98 billion by 2010.

Whilst competition to dominate the collaboration market

intensifies amongst large players, disruptive solutions based on Peer-to-Peer (also known as P2P) functionality will force organisations to re-think their collaboration strategies. Collaboration functionality will be componentised, allowing easy integration with Line-of-Business (LOB) applications. In the meantime, more standards will emerge to improve collaboration functionality amongst products. There will be a change towards on-line, hosted/SaaS solutions, with the World Wide Web increasingly taking on a user-centric profile, enabling easy and seamless Document Collaboration, and challenging the dominance of desktop applications.